Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health

by William Davis

A wheat belly represents the accumulation of fat that results from years of consuming foods that trigger insulin, the hormone of fat storage. While some people store fat in their buttocks and thighs, most people collect ungainly fat around the middle. This “central” or “visceral” fat is unique: Unlike fat in other body areas, it provokes inflammatory phenomena, distorts insulin responses, and issues abnormal metabolic signals to the rest of the body. In the unwitting wheat-bellied male, visceral fat also produces estrogen, creating “man breasts.

The consequences of wheat consumption, however, are not just manifested on the body’s surface; wheat can also reach deep down into virtually every organ of the body, from the intestines, liver, heart, and thyroid gland all the way up to the brain. In fact, there’s hardly an organ that is not affected by wheat in some potentially damaging way.

For that reason, I often use wheat to signify all gluten-containing grains.

(Glucose increases blood sugar to 100, hence a glycemic index of 100. The extent to which a particular food increases blood sugar relative to glucose determines that food’s glycemic index.)

Diabetes in many cases can be cured—not simply managed—by removal of carbohydrates, especially wheat, from the diet.

Wheat as a crop has succeeded on an unprecedented scale, exceeded only by corn in acreage of farmland planted. It is, by a long stretch, among the most consumed grains on earth, constituting 20 percent of all calories consumed.

The genetic backbone of your high-tech poppy seed muffin has achieved its current condition by a process of evolutionary acceleration that makes us look like Homo habilis trapped somewhere in the early Pleistocene.

Natufians harvested wild einkorn wheat and may have purposefully stored seeds to sow in areas of their own choosing the next season. Einkorn wheat eventually became an essential component of the Natufian diet, reducing the need for hunting and gathering.

The result: A loaf of bread, biscuit, or pancake of today is different than its counterpart of a thousand years ago, different even from what our grandmothers made.

Wheat did not evolve naturally in the New World, but was introduced by Christopher Columbus, whose crew first planted a few grains in Puerto Rico in 1493.

Eli bristles at the suggestion that wheat products might be unhealthy, citing instead the yield-increasing, profit-expanding agricultural practices of the past few decades as the source of adverse health effects of wheat. She views einkorn and emmer as the solution, restoring the original grasses, grown under organic conditions, to replace modern industrial wheat.

If the gap left by wheat is filled with vegetables, nuts, meats, eggs, avocados, olives, cheese—i.e., real food—then not only won’t you develop a dietary deficiency, you will enjoy better health, more energy, better sleep, weight loss, and reversal of all the abnormal phenomena we’ve discussed.

The insulin-glucose roller coaster caused by wheat, along with brain-addictive exorphin effects, makes it difficult for some people to gradually reduce wheat, so abrupt cessation may be preferable.

After a 7:00 a.m. breakfast of two scrambled eggs with vegetables, peppers, and olive oil, for instance, you likely won’t be hungry until noon or 1 p.m.

You will also avoid the afternoon slump that many people experience at about 2:00 or 3:00 p.m., the sleepy, sluggish fog that follows a lunch of a sandwich on whole wheat bread, the mental shutdown that occurs because of the glucose high followed by the low.

Fasting means no food, just water (vigorous hydration is also key for safe fasting), for a period of anywhere from eighteen hours to several days.

The ability to fast, of course, mimics the natural situation of a hunter-gatherer, who may go without food for days or even weeks when the hunt fails or some other natural obstacle to food availability develops.

The ability to fast comfortably is natural; the inability to go for more than a few hours before crazily seeking calories is unnatural.

Like nicotine withdrawal, wheat withdrawal can cause fatigue, mental fogginess, and irritability.

What causes wheat withdrawal? It is likely that years of high-carbohydrate eating makes the metabolism reliant on a constant supply of readily absorbed sugars such as those in wheat. Removing sugar sources forces the body to adapt to mobilizing and burning fatty acids instead of more readily accessed sugars, a process that requires several days to kick in.

Once you have followed a wheat-free diet for a few months, you may find that reintroduction of wheat provokes undesirable effects ranging from joint aches to asthma to gastrointestinal distress. They can occur whether or not withdrawal happened in the first place. The most common reexposure “syndrome” consists of gas, bloating, cramps, and diarrhea that lasts for six to forty-eight hours.

Extend your vegetable variety beyond your usual habits. Explore mushrooms such as shiitake and porcini. Adorn cooked dishes with alliums such as scallions, garlic, leeks, shallots, and chives.

Year-round access to high-sugar fruits can overexpose you to sugars, sufficient to amplify diabetic tendencies.

I tell patients that small servings, such as eight to ten blueberries, two strawberries, a few wedges of apple or orange, are fine; more than that starts to provoke blood sugar excessively.

Berries (blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, cranberries, cherries) are at the top of the list with the greatest nutrient content and the least sugars, while bananas, pineapple, mango, and papaya n...

Use healthy oils liberally, such as extra-virgin olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil, and cocoa butter, and avoid polyunsaturated oils such as sunflower, safflower, corn, and vegetable oils (which trigger oxidation and inflammation).

Try to minimize heating and cook at lower temperatures; never fry, since deep-frying is the extreme of oxidation that triggers, among other things, AGE formation.

saturated fat was never the problem. Carbohydrates in combination with saturated fat, however, cause measures of LDL particles to skyrocket.

Try to buy meats from grass-fed livestock (which have greater omega-3 fatty acid composition and are less likely to be antibiotic- and growth hormone–ridden), and preferentially those raised under humane conditions

avoid cured meats entirely.

Enjoy cheese, another wonderfully diverse food.

Other dairy products such as cottage cheese, yogurt, milk, and butter should be consumed in limited quantities of no more than one or two servings per day.

It’s important to extend your food choices outside of familiar habits, since part of the success of diet is variety in order to provide plentiful vitamins, minerals, fibers, and phytonutrients.

In the world of grains, one grain stands apart, since it consists entirely of protein, fiber, and oils: flaxseed. Because it is essentially free of carbohydrates that increase blood sugar, ground flaxseed is the one grain that fits nicely into this approach (the unground grain is indigestible). Use ground flaxseed as a hot cereal (heated, for instance, with milk, unsweetened almond milk, coconut milk or coconut water, or soymilk, with added walnuts or blueberries) or add it to foods such as cottage cheese or chilis. You can also use it to make a breading for chicken and fish.

Substituting wheat with cornstarch, brown rice starch, potato starch, or tapioca starch, for example, as is often done in gluten-free recipes, will make you fat and diabetic.

Erythritol, xylitol, sucralose, and stevia are among the sweeteners that will not impact blood sugar levels, nor cause gastrointestinal distress as mannitol or sorbitol can. They are also safe, lacking the adverse potential health consequences of aspartame and saccharin.